Longing's Levant (29 page)

Evann-Sin slid into the control chair from the left side as Cainer left it on the right. “Why is there a hurry?”

“Those lines you see trailing there are receptors from a thin mesh screen situated atop Zenia’s ship. The screen captures the rays of the sun and sends them down through the wires into the E.S.U, forming an artificial atmosphere in which my lady lives. The units are made so they are recharged by the power of the sun. In disconnecting the wires as I had to in order to bring the E.S.U. to The
Levant
, the life support system—that artificial atmosphere—was deactivated. My lady is in a state of stasis but that won’t last long.”

“Stasis?” Kaibyn repeated, his forehead crinkled.

“Inactivity resulting from a static balance between opposing forces. In this case—life and death. That means she will not be able to exist without the power generated from the sun.”

And then the Reaper was standing over his lady, and for the first time in hundreds of years looked down into her beautiful face. His hands trembled as he pressed them to the glass hatch.

“She is lovely,” Kaibyn whispered as he came to stand beside Cainer.

“Aye,” Cainer said so softly the word was but a breath of sound.

“Will it cause her any harm to open the unit now?” Evann-Sin asked.

Cainer nodded. “I’ll need to rewire this unit into my own and bring her up slowly. The artificial atmosphere must be in place before I can wake her.”

As the Reaper set about doing what needed to be done to awake his lady, Evann-Sin began typing in the coordinates to the Abyss. He stopped and looked around. “You’d best go back to the island, Kai,” he said.

Kaibyn tore his gaze from the beauty lying in front of him. “Why?”

“We are heading for the Abyss, demon,” Cainer answered for the warrior.

“Oh,” Kaibyn said. “Right.”

One moment the demon was there and the next he wasn’t.

“He seemed a bit dejected,” Evann-Sin remarked.

“I think he wanted to wait until my lady was awake,” Cainer laughed.

“Always enamored of other men’s women, isn’t he?” the warrior sighed.

It didn’t take the Reaper long to rewire Aisling’s E.S.U. As soon as he was sure the unit was working properly, he replaced Evann-Sin at the console and began typing in the data that would begin the decompression of his lady’s unit.

“Have you any notion what you’ll do about Lilit when we reach the Abyss?” Cainer asked.

“I intend to rid the world of the bitch. Why?”

“What about any others with her?”

Evann-Sin narrowed his eyes. “That depends. If they have harmed my lady in any way—even given her a hangnail—I will crush them.”

“Good man,” the Reaper said. “Best not leave anything there that can harm the human race. The Mage knew the right man to hire for this mission.”

“What will you do when this is over? Will you return to your home?”

Cainer’s fingers stilled on the computer’s flat keyboard. “I have not had time to consider my options yet. I suppose that depends on what Aisling wants to do.”

“Nice to be able to say that, isn’t it?” Evann-Sin asked softly.

The Reaper turned around in his console chair and looked longingly at the E.S.U. where his lady slept. “Aye,” he replied. “Life is once more worth living.”

Chapter Sixteen

Kaibyn sat down on the one chair in the Reaper’s hut and stared at the charcoal rendering Cainer Cree had drawn of his lady from memory. As beautiful as the sleeping woman had been aboard The
Levant
, with her eyes open and looking at the viewer, she was a veritable goddess in her own right.

“As beautiful as I, demon?”

Jumping at the sound of the voice, Kaibyn snapped his head around. His eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open.

“Morrigunia?” he breathed.

“Aye,” she said and came toward him.

Lovely as Lilabet was, gorgeous as Tamara, beautiful as Aisling—none could hold a candle to the exquisite creature whose naked body glistened with dew in the moonlight cast from the single window.

“He turned
you
down?” Kaibyn asked.

“There is no accounting for tastes, eh, my demon?” the goddess laughed.

Her bare breasts were lush globes, the dark areolas around her prominent nipples like knowing eyes watching him. A flat belly, tiny waist that flared into very accommodating hips and long legs drew his gaze. The groomed patch of vibrant red hair at the juncture of her thighs was only a shade lighter than the hip-length tresses that curled possessively around her creamy shoulders. A slender tattoo banded her upper left arm, and as she drew closer Kaibyn could make out intricate knot work.

“There is a raven here,” she said, lifting an elegant finger to point at the tattoo. “It is my symbol.” She caressed the raven. “Do you like it?”

“Aye,” the demon agreed. She was but a foot away and the sweet scent of heather filled his nostrils.

“Will you mate with me, Kaibyn Zafeyr?” she asked.

“With the greatest of pleasures,” he replied.

She was on him, riding him like a crazed cat in heat and he was lying beneath her, staring up at her bucking, watching her breasts flapping deliciously. He reached up to cup those silken globes and she threw her head back and pumped even harder.

Never had a woman taken him, Kaibyn thought, as she rode him. Never had one taken charge and—well—attacked him. He decided he liked being the one used for a change and almost wished he could find out what it felt like to be…

She pried herself off him and before he could utter a sound had turned him over to his belly. Reaching beneath his hips, she yanked his ass in the air and with one swift, deft stroke prodded him with something he knew wasn’t part of her body.

Yelping, but getting an erection harder than any he’d ever known, he looked back over his shoulder to see her grinning at him.

“What are y-you using?” he gasped.

“Don’t worry, demon, it is quite safe. Just a little something many women find convenient when there’s no man around.”

She probed him deep and it was a bit painful, but as the muscles of his anus grew accustomed to the size and the deep in and out friction, he found he thoroughly enjoyed the sensation. Her fondling his balls as she thrust into him had a truly entertaining feel, too.

Kaibyn was lost in the violent sensation of being taken in such a manner. He was as hard as stone and aching, and when he was about to come, she withdrew the prod and flipped him over so quickly he knew what Rabin and Evann-Sin had experienced when he’d taken them flying.

She was on him again, pressed down to the very nub of his cock and bucking once more like a wild horse. The slap of her rump against his thighs was almost obscene. The walls of her vagina were tightening and releasing in such a way, he felt as though she milked the climax from his body. As he poured into her—his fingers pinched around her nipples—he felt her rapid succession of squeezes deep in her cunt and knew she was coming, as well.

And come she did—with a yell that shook the rafters of the little hut and rang in the demon’s ears for an hour after.

“Like that, Kai?” she asked, as she slid down beside him on the floor.

“Aye,” he managed to squeak. For the first time in his many thousands of years of existence, he had more than met his match.

He frowned.

“Concerned about your blood-oath to Lilabet?”

Kaibyn flinched, and his handsome face twisted. “I did not consider…”

“There is no reason to consider,” she said with a grin. “I am not mortal. You are not mortal. What we do together has no effect on sweet Lilabet. Now if I were mortal, you would have been a bad, bad boy. As it is, you are simply being true to your immortal nature.” She took hold of his cock. “Now, would you like to fuck me again?”

Kaibyn’s leer was predatory. “Aye, I damned well do.”

Chapter Seventeen

Tamara lay upon her bed and stared up at the vault of the stone ceiling above her. The palm of her right hand stroked her belly where Evann-Sin’s child was growing. A gentle smile creased her lips for a moment before the first tear slid slowly down her pale cheek.

There was no moonlight in Sheol—no light, no warmth of any kind. Evil magic made it possible to see in this hellish place. The tortured sound of the walls heaving hopeless breaths had ceased to distract her, but she was aware of the lost souls encased in that hard stone. Just as Lilit had told her she would be, Tamara often heard the tormented cries and pitiful screams of the Lost Ones. She said prayers for those nameless souls when she took to her bed for sleep.

Lilit had been gone for two days now, and not even the bat-women—Amenirdis and Hekat—had shown themselves this waking period. Though one or the other brought cold, tasteless food for Tamara three times each period, the young woman’s belly was growling for she’d eaten nothing in quite some time.

“Perhaps they have left me here to die, little one,” she said to her unborn child.

Almost as though her words had conjured the food, it appeared on the table by the bed. For once, it was hot and smelled palatable.

Swinging her feet to the floor, Tamara attacked the food and found it was as delicious as it smelled. She gobbled it like a starving animal, mindless of the grease that dripped down her chin. A faint movement in the darkest corner of her room made Tamara start and she paused with a leg of chicken at her lips.

Amenirdis appeared from out of the darkness. Of the two fiends, she was the comelier—though no one would ever have labeled either pretty.

“We are slaves here just as you are,” the bat-woman whispered. “Though Hekat doesn’t mind it as much as I.” She came closer to Tamara’s bed. “Perhaps you will remember me when you are free of this place, milady.”

Tamara dropped the de-fleshed chicken bone to the chipped platter upon which she had found it. Running the back of her hand under her messy chin, she replied she doubted she would ever be free of Lilit.

“But you will,” Amenirdis said. “He comes for you.”

“Evann-Sin?” Tamara asked, standing so quickly her unappeased hunger made her lightheaded.

Amenirdis came closer still and lowered her voice. “Aye, he will be with the other but it is he of whom I speak.”

“Kaibyn?” Tamara prompted. “The demon?”

“Nay, he would not dare show himself in the Abyss. It is the
other
.”

“What other?” Tamara questioned. “I don’t know who you mean. It is Rabin?”

“I do not know his name but he has spoken to me in my thoughts. He is a powerful One with the Blood.”

Tamara shrank back. “He is a blood-drinker?” Her eyes went wide. “My warrior is with a blood-drinker?”

Amenirdis nodded. “He, too, is one of us, now.”

Grief drove through Tamara like a sharp quarrel and she staggered back. “No,” she whispered, covering her face with her hands. “Oh, Riel, no!”

“You must not sorrow, milady. All will be well. They come to destroy Queen Lilit and take you from Sheol. Is that not what you want?”

“Who did this to my love?” Tamara asked. “Who turned my warrior to a fiend?”

Amenirdis flinched. She took a step back, hurt registering on her leathery face. “It was the only way he could save you.”

Tamara stared at her companion. “He embraced the Blood for me?”

“You are his heart’s desire and his life is yours.”

Racked with misery, Tamara sat down on her bed and drew her knees up. “He will come to curse the day he ever laid eyes upon me,” she said. Listlessly, she looked at Amenirdis. “Where is Lilit, anyway?”

“Gone to see if any Daughters remain alive. Neither Hekat nor I believe any do, but the queen would not listen. If none of her Daughters have survived, she intends to make new ones.”

“I doubt King Numair will have stood idly by and not put protection out for his people. Lilit may find it harder than she imagines making new ones,” Tamara said through clenched teeth.

“I think you may be right.” She looked pointedly at Tamara’s belly. “All the more reason you should be very careful of your son.”

Tamara locked gazes with the bat-woman. “Why are you being so solicitous, Amenirdis? What do you have to gain?”

“Nothing save my freedom,” the fiend answered. “I would like nothing more than to have Sheol to myself and not be at the beckoning call of the queen. Solitude suits me. When he comes, he will help your lover rid the world of the last of the Daughters. By helping you, I hope to gain pardon. I have no desire to end up like Hekat and the queen. I want to go on.”

“And turn others?” Tamara accused.

Amenirdis shook her head. “Why would I want anyone else here? Everything I need is here at Sheol.”

“What will you live on if there are no others?”

“Live on?” Amenirdis questioned, and then she laughed. “Milady, I am not alive as you know life. I can exist for eternities if left alone!”

“Without blood?” Tamara scoffed.

Amenirdis smiled. “Milady, look around you. There is nourishment in the very walls!”